


And Ghosts Did Shriek and Shrill

by Llama1412



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Families of Choice, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Plague, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Search for a Cure, Self-Mutilation, Velen (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:55:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28348011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llama1412/pseuds/Llama1412
Summary: After the unjust murder of his team, Vernon Roche is willing to do anything to get them back. Even if it means drawing on unspoken-of beliefs from a childhood in Velen.
Relationships: Blue Stripes & Vernon Roche, Iorveth/Vernon Roche, Vernon Roche & Ves, Ves & Blue Stripes
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	And Ghosts Did Shriek and Shrill

**Author's Note:**

> See end of chapter notes for details on the self-mutilation warning.

Every Velen native knew the tales. If you need to beg a favor of the Ladies of the Wood, you must send a child down the Trail of Treats and then plead before a shrine to the Ladies. 

Vernon Roche could never sacrifice a child, but he could offer whatever value they might find in himself. That was  _ all _ he had to offer. 

The Trail of Treats sent fury seething through him. He understood, sort of – living in the swamps of Velen, one rainfall could make the difference between eating or starving. The Ladies demanded a high price, and Roche couldn’t understand how any parent could send one of their children down the Trail of Treats, but he did understand how desperation led you to things you never thought you would do. 

He’d never thought  _ he _ would be desperate enough to resort to this. Nonetheless, here he was, walking down the Trail of Treats in tattered armor covered in symbols of a kingdom that no longer existed, completely alone – by choice, and by fate. His team had been stolen from him by the Kaedweni King Henselt and Mage Dethmold – and Roche had gotten his revenge in blood. But it wasn’t enough. They were still gone.

Ves, the only survivor, had taken to sublimating her grief into violence, slaughtering any troops who came near them as they had traveled to Velen. She didn’t understand Roche’s belief in the Ladies – but then, she wasn’t from Velen. Born and raised in Vizima, she didn’t understand life in the swamps, life where the Ladies’ favor was the difference between starving or not. 

She didn’t understand, but she still traveled beside him. Them two, they were the only ones left of the once-legendary elite Blue Stripes strike force. Roche got the feeling that neither of them were ready to be apart for terribly long.

But this part, this Roche  _ had _ to do alone, lest he risk the chance that the Ladies might turn on Ves for payment. Just because Ves didn’t believe in them didn’t mean they couldn’t hurt her.

But this time, Roche wouldn’t fail. This time, his people wouldn’t pay for his absence. This time, he would protect them.

Hopefully, he would also bring them back.

Roche was sure the Ladies could do it. There was very little he believed the Ladies couldn’t do, though Ves doubted greatly. But just because they  _ could _ do it didn’t mean they would. Not unless his offering was enough.

The Trail of Treats – a pathway lined with streamers of pastries and cookies and cakes that wound through the swamp – led Roche towards a clearing with several wooden hunts, all of them eerily silent. He clenched his fingers around the hilts of his weapons, creeping cautiously forward. He was here as a supplicant, but to not be on guard in a place like Velen was asking for death. 

Despite his wariness, nothing attacked him as he stepped forward into the grassy clearing surrounded by swamp water. In fact, aside from the sound of his own breath, there was no indication of any life here at all.

Roche shivered, swallowing against the fear that tried to rise. He was here for a purpose, here to ask a favor of the Ladies. Swallowing, he stepped up to the stones in the center of the clearing, where a large stone jutted out. Even from a distance, Roche could see the bloodstains on the rock. This, he realized, was where payment was made to the Ladies.

He’d seen it happen once, when he was young. He remembered the way people in Benek had started growing sick, started falling feverish and raving, started dying. He remembered the fear, thick in the air, thick in his lungs as his mother continued to work, thick in his breath as he wandered around the village, keeping his distance from everyone. At the time, he’d pretended the distance was his choice, that he didn’t want to risk catching anything. In reality, the distance had existed long before the sickness came – no matter where they traveled, whores and whorseons were scorned and spat upon.

One day, as though the tension in the air had grown so taut as to snap, the sickness passed. Those who were already ill still died, but Roche distinctly remembered the day all others stopped falling sick. 

It had been hot and humid out, sweat tacky on Roche’s brow and the small of his back as he played sword fighting with imaginary opponents. When the village ealderman walked by, it was only because Roche had just triumphantly defeated all of his foes that he decided to follow. He liked following people, liked observing them, liked seeing the ways people behaved when they knew they were watched and when they didn’t.

The ealderman was clearly not aware he was being followed, even though Roche wasn’t particularly stealthy in his pursuit. The man’s fingers were twitching restlessly at his sides and he muttered to himself, very obviously distraught. On his belt hung a knife that Roche had never seen before. The blade glinted in the sunlight and above the wooden hilt, Roche almost thought the pommel was shaped like faces. 

He was busy contemplating where the ealdorman may have gotten the knife to really pay attention to the way they walked up to the Ladies’ shrine near the path into town. In fact, his thoughts were only interrupted when the ealdorman drew the knife from his belt and, as Roche watched, raised it to his head and sliced off his ear with a muffled scream. 

Roche hadn’t known he was screaming too until a bloody hand slapped over his mouth.

“Quiet, boy!” the ealdorman hissed. 

Roche looked up at him with wide eyes, tasting iron as he breathed rapidly through the hand over his face. The ealdorman was bleeding – bleeding from the open wound where his ear had been.

“Why?” Roche spoke against the hand, muffled and distorted.

The ealdorman sighed, face softening. “Your mother claims you were born in Velen. I suppose you should know.” 

The bloody hand released him and gestured towards the shrine before pressing against the bleeding wound. Roche turned to look and saw that the ear – the ealdorman’s  _ ear _ – was sitting atop the shrine, bloody dripping down the body of the Lady.

Roche had always wondered why they were painted sometimes. He gulped.

“It’s fair payment,” the ealdorman explained. “I pled to the Ladies, asked that they save our village. They protect Velen, protect the people that live here. But nothing is free.”

“But –  _ why?” _ Roche stuttered, blood slowly drying on his face.

As he watched, a raven swooped down and perched on the shrine, picking up the ear in its beak and looking down at them with too-intelligent eyes before flying off.

To this day, Roche would swear that the trees whispered with words as wind wound around his ear, sending shivers down his spine.  _ Your plea is heard,  _ the swamp spoke and from that day on, no one else in Benek fell ill. Not even the standard yearly colds.

If the Ladies could do that,  _ surely _ they could bring back Roche’s men. 

But nothing was free, and he hadn’t sent a child down the Trail of Treats.

Roche licked his lips, swallowing heavily as he drew his knife. He walked up to the altar, breathing shakily. He could do this. For his men. If it would return the Blue Stripes to him, he would do  _ anything. _

He took a deep breath, hearing it echo in his ears in the unnatural silence of the clearing. Then he spoke, willing his voice not to waver. “Ladies of the Wood,” he called, “I beg of you – my men, the Blue Stripes, were murdered. I know your power is great, and I will pay anything you require. Just – please. Please bring my people back.”

Roche’s hands shook shamefully as he raised one to grip his left ear, and the other to – to – 

He closed his eyes and pulled his knife down, muffling his scream by biting his lip hard. For a long moment, all he could register was pain, pain,  _ pain,  _ but gradually, he became aware of the drip of blood against his shoulder, the shudder of his breath in the air, and the clatter of his knife as he dropped it and his ear onto the altar.

“Please,” Roche begged, words slurred through nerveless lips, “please spare their lives.  _ Please!” _ The tears sliding down his face may have been from the pain or may have been from his grief, but Roche hardly noticed them as he collapsed in front of the altar, gasping for breath, “please. Please bring them back.”

The wind whistled through the trees, chilling the blood on his face, and a raven crowed, making him jump.

_ Your plea has been heard,  _ the swamp whispered and for the first time since Kaedwen, Roche felt light, his shoulders straightening as his grief weighed down on him slightly less.

* * *

That night, three beautiful women appeared in Roche’s dream. He knew it was a dream, because there was rotting underbrush in the swamp around him, but he couldn’t smell that wet soil scent that should accompany it. 

_ You ask much, Blue Lily,  _ one of the women spoke, and her voice carried an odd reverb. Roche was struck with the thought that it was almost sweet underneath that. Innocent. Not a threat.

“Please,” he begged, “they’re my family. I need them. They deserved better – and it was my fault. I’ll do anything, please. Just bring them back.”

_ Anything? _ another of the women spoke up. She was weaving braids into her long hair and her eyes seemed otherworldly as they fixed on him.

“I swear it,” Roche bowed his head. “Please.”

_ To give life,  _ said the final sister – for these had to be none other than the Ladies of the Wood,  _ is no easy task. You ask for six lives. Are you prepared to pay for them? _

He swallowed and nodded. “Yes. I will pay any price. Please.”

_ Six lives,  _ the weaver said, voice distorted like the others.  _ You will serve for six lifetimes. _

“Agreed.”

The women smiled, their lips inordinately red. Blood red, Roche thought, and then his thoughts flew apart as fire burned in his palms and pain overwhelmed all else again.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this chapter has 2 non-graphic depictions of people cutting off their own ears. Please read with care.


End file.
